London Calling: CIA partners with UK RF firm

In-Q-Tel, the investment wing of the Central Intelligence Agency, has entered into a partnership with Lime Microsystems Ltd. to develop transceiver technology.

In-Q-Tel usually secures its partnerships with investment but no investment sum was disclosed by Lime (Guildford, England). The alliance is intended to advance the use of multi-band, multi-standard transceivers for use in both commercial and government applications, according to Lime.

Lime has pioneered flexible RF for use in small basestations and multiple standard receivers for a number of years. Its LMS6002D is a fully integrated multi-band, multi-standard single-chip RF transceiver for 3GPP (WCDMA/HSPA and LTE), 3GPP2 (CDMA2000) and WiMax applications. It can be digitally configured to operate in 16 user-selectable bandwidths up to 28-MHz.

"IQT's partners require exceptional reliability, high performance and a proven product, so the partnership is a significant validation of both our transceiver and our stringent manufacturing and testing procedures," said Lime CEO, Ebrahim Bushehri, in a statement.

Lower cost LEDS on GaN

Plessey Semiconductors Ltd. (Plymouth, England), a well known name from the past of electronics, has taken delivery of an Aixtron reactor able to process seven 6-inch wafers at a time to create a production line for high brightness LEDs. Plessey is using its own technology to make gallium-nitride-on-silicon wafers.

"We use a much thinner GaN layer at only 2.5-micron compared to 6 to 8 micron other GaN-on-silicon technologies," said Neil Harper, Plessey's HBLED product line director, in a statement. Thinner GaN means less deposition time and more LED production cycles per unit time.

The GaN-on-silicon LEDs are capable of 150 lumens per watt efficiency and Plessey expects 95 percent yields so that six wafers can produce 14,000 high brightness LEDs of 1 square millimetre in area. Plessey intends to move to 8-inch substrates in the future for even greater cost savings.

The first samples of a blue LED are characterised by peak emission at a wavelength of 460-nm with typical current of 350-mA. The technology extends to other emission wavelengths with, for example, cyan at 500-nm and green at 530-nm with amber and white output enabled by phosphor conversion. White output will initially achieve 80 lumens per watt available later this year, and 150 lumens per watt devices are planned for June 2013.Samsung rules the cellphone roost

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. is king of the hill across all types of cellphone according to market research from IHS-iSuppli (El Segundo, Calif.). Interestingly the 2Q12 results show Nokia still a significant second place player behind Samsung (see table below).